


Vast and Eternal Laws

by xtian



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xtian/pseuds/xtian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teenage Kira goes to visit her Auntie Cosima.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vast and Eternal Laws

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is my first ever fic on AO3, so thank you for reading, and I would love if you would tell me what you think by leaving me some feedback. It's only a little ficlet, but it's close to my hear. I wrote it to work out some grief I'm experiencing right now.
> 
> I guess I have to put in a disclaimer saying that the quotes from Island of Dr. Moreau are not mine (obvs).
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and please tell me what you think. You can also find me on tumblr if you want to drop a comment in my ask box or anything: cophineisgay.tumblr.com.

            Sunlight shone bright and clear through her bedroom window, striking the foil angels on a mobile hanging from the ceiling, and glinting off to throw dancing patterns on the painted walls. Kira lay in bed for some time watching the mobile as it spun slowly, caught by breezes from her ceiling fan. The mobile was the only child’s thing still left in her room. The angels had stayed a shimmering protector for the last ten years, since she and her mother had made them so long ago. _They remind me of Auntie Helena_ , she had said to Sarah, and they still did.

            Everything else in the room had changed and grown along with Kira. Stuffed animals had years since been carefully stowed in plastic bins and stored in the basement, her small twin bed was now a full frame to accommodate her five-foot-seven teenage body. Where once there was pink and patterns of butterflies everywhere, now were shades of blue. Besides the mobile, the only other remnant of her childhood was a drawing framed above her bed of her mum holding a fire extinguisher that she had drawn when she was seven. Sarah always insisted that drawing had saved her life, but she would never tell Kira how.

            A knock on the door made Kira turn her head sharply. “Come in,” she said, her voice raspy from sleep.

            Sarah poked her head in. “Morning, Monkey,” she said, pushing the door open and coming to sit down on the edge of Kira’s bed. Age had hardly changed her over the last ten years. She still slouched when she walked, a consequence of her engrained punk background that she would never outgrow. Her hair still hung curly and lanky about her shoulders, but now there was evidence of silver beginning to appear in strands here and there. Her face had gained a few more lines, but it was still hard and determined, as always.

            “You remember what day it is, yeah Monkey?” Sarah asked, her voice slightly less accented, as it had dulled throughout her years living in Toronto.

            “Yeah, mum,” Kira replied. “It’s the 30th. I’m going to go visit Auntie Cosima.” She sat up and rubbed the sleep away from her eyes and leaned over to her bedside table. From the drawer she pulled an old and faded book. The bindings had seen so much wear that they were barely attached to the pages. Among these pages were drawings, formulas, strings of letters that didn’t make any sense to Kira.

            “What’s that?” Sarah questioned, leaning over to take a closer look at the worn and faded cover. “ _The Island of Dr. Moreau._ Where did you get that?”

            If Sarah didn’t remember, Kira wasn’t going to remind her. “I borrowed it from Auntie Cosima. I’m going to take it to her today.”

            Sarah’s face softened and she rubbed a hand on Kira’s leg. “Okay. Tell her I say hi. And that I love her.”

            Sarah stood up and left the room, closing the door behind her.

            Kira dressed herself slowly and warmly and walked outside into the lightly falling snow. Mrs. S’s truck was gone from the driveway; Kira had no idea where her adoptive grandmother had gone…sometimes Siobhan left for days on end to “take care of business things.” It had been a long time now since Mrs. S had deemed Sarah a fit enough mother to be left alone with Kira. They still lived in S’s house, of course. Sarah said that they still lived there because it was cheaper, but Kira had a sneaking suspicion that her mum loved Mrs. S a lot more than she let on, and didn’t want to leave her alone in their big house.

            Kira trudged along the sidewalk for what seemed like a long time in the cold. By the time she reached the Dyad Institute thirty minutes later, she was chilled to the core, even in her large winter coat. She walked inside the building and sat down on one of the long cushioned white couches that dotted the lobby here and there. _Just long enough to get warm,_ she thought to herself. _Then I’ll go see Auntie Cosima._

            From across the lobby, she watched as one of the large glass doors slid open and a beautiful woman glided through, her strides languid and graceful, even in her heels. She wouldn’t remember Kira now, but Kira never forgot a face. _Delphine,_ she thought, recognizing the woman she had called Auntie all those years ago. Delphine also hadn’t changed. She was still glamorously beautiful with her golden curls and long pale face, her eyes round and shining, almost sad. She wore a wedding band now, trim and silver on her slim finger. Kira wondered who her spouse was…if they were anywhere near as cool as Auntie Cosima.

            After several minutes of warming up, Kira made her way to the elevator and up to the roof gardens, a place that was open to the public, as the Dyad had decided some time ago. There were no plants growing in the garden as of right now, as it was winter and everything was covered in a fresh layer of powder, but the rooftop garden was usually filled with all kinds of beautiful plants. Scientists made the most amazing garden designers.  

            In the middle of the large garden area, there was a huge round slab of polished black granite. On the slab was the white outline of a nautilus shell. From out of her large coat pocket, Kira pulled the old battered copy of _The Island of Dr. Moreau._

            “Hi, Auntie Cosima,” she said softly to the stone.

            It had been nine years since Cosima’s passing. She had lived just long enough to discover a cure for the respiratory issues facing her genetic identicals. However, by the time she found the cure, her own disease had progressed too far to do anything about. Kira remembered spending her final months with her, wrapped up in the blankets of Felix’s bed (and then a hospital bed as things got progressively worse). They would read together, and talk about science. Cosima would weave incredible stories of wonder and mischief, interspersing her intricate tales with “dudes,” and “likes,” and “yeah mans,” making Kira giggle.

            Over time Cosima became almost unrecognizable. Her long dreadlocks were gone as her hair fell out, her lips became chapped and peeling from her treatments, and she could barely go an hour without coughing up blood into a little basin on her bedside table. Delphine always insisted that it wasn’t right for Kira to see Cosima like this, but Sarah insisted that she spend all the time she could with her Auntie. “She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” Sarah would say about her sister, “and I want my daughter to experience that wonder before there’s no time left.”

            Until one day, that time was up. Sarah received a call early in the morning on January 30th from Auntie Delphine, and little Kira wasn’t allowed to go visit with Auntie Cosima that day. Sarah spent that day on the floor in her bathroom with several bottles of wine. Mrs. S shepherded Kira to the den where they worked on arts and crafts to cheer her mum up, while anguished sobs escaped from upstairs every now and then, striking their hearts like a hammer.

            Auntie Cosima had not been buried, of course. She had wanted her body given to science. But when they had finished their experiments (the thought of which still made Kira’s mother cry over to this day), Cosima had been cremated, and Delphine had insisted that the Dyad let her use the rooftop garden in Cosima’s honor. Come spring of that year, her ashes had been mixed with the soil and seeds of all the plants new to the garden that year, and the stone had been placed here in her memory. In the summer, the stone was surrounded by lavender.

            Despite the cold and the snow on the ground, Kira sat down on the frozen earth, propping her back up against the nautilus stone.

“I brought you something special today, Auntie Cosima,” Kira said, flipping open _The Island of Dr. Moreau._ She began to read. She read and read for a few hours until her body could no longer feel the cold around her.

            “There is – though I do not know how there is or why there is – a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of me, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.”

            Kira closed the book slowly and leaned her head back against the large stone, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. Then faintly, as if on some far away wind, she heard her aunt’s voice come to her from the far reaches of her memory: “I love this book.” And then her own voice, in a fainter whisper: “It’s special.”

            And in that moment, more than any other moment before, she felt the true power of just how special that book was. Not in its ability to provide the key to a cure for sickness, but for the connection it gifted to Kira.

            This time she said it out loud, fingering the pages of the book that her Auntie Cosima had inspected with such awe so many years ago:

            “It’s special.”


End file.
